Why I Prefer An At-Home Yoga Practice

I’ve fallen in love with yoga. I love stretching and flexing and seeing myself improve with each week.

However as I’m watching my spending I decided that yoga is a luxury that I won’t buy into. It means that I would rather practice at home or outdoors than in a studio and this is for a number of reasons.

Firstly, yoga to me is not always something I can plan ahead for. I want to be able to practice whenever I want. This is something that practicing at a studio doesn’t afford me. I also like being able to mix up practices and with free classes found all over the internet, I’m able to try a range of classes and save the ones I love and discard those that I don’t. I found when doing yoga at a studio I was limited by my availability and was doing classes that I didn’t necessarily love and this waned my love of the practice.

Secondly, classes can get expensive. I found that one class a week wasn’t enough for me but I wasn’t comfortable spending $50+ a week for more classes. However, I know my body. Being a former gymnast and having done calisthenics and dancing for a long period of time I know alignments and posture and what my body’s limitations are. If you’ve never really done yoga or gymnastics/dancing or anything similar, please pay to take a few beginner classes before practicing only at home. Its so important that you are doing things correctly because you can really injure yourself.

On top of classes being expensive, I’m not down with the whole lifestyle that seems to follow yoga enthusiasts. You know the one with the clique of girls decked out in a different $200 Lululemon outfit who then go and get their healthy smoothies and raw slices. I’ve been to enough studios where these girls seem to dominate and although I’ve got tough skin, I don’t want to pay money to have people look down on me when I’m doing something for me.

Practicing on my own also allows me freedom. It means that if I’m following a video, I can pause, skip or stop when I feel like it. If I want to hold a pose for a longer period of time, I can. If I don’t feel like doing a section, I can skip it. If I get halfway through and am just not feeling it, I can stop. Generally stopping and leaving a class at a studio halfway through isn’t looked favourably upon. It also means that I can add sections or mix up videos as much as I like making the practice completely my own.

But lastly I love the comfort of being on my own. Especially when at home. I love that there is no one else around me so I can focus completely on myself and not on others. Being at home means I can practice in a bra and underwear or pajamas if that’s what I feel like doing. I love that I can jump in my shower straight after practice or go straight to bed without having to come home first.

These are the things that make me prefer at home practice but like with anything, it’s important to find what works for you.